Okay so recently I was driving between Davisville and East Greenwich on Rt. 1 aka Post Road.
It was not the first time I've done so, by the way. But something caught my eye after I noticed that the Tim Horton's restaurant on Rt. 1 was out of business. This is the one just south of the area's only McDonald's, which closed down back in January or so. Of course that whole strip on Post Road kinda looks like a museum/cemetery for boarded-up retailers or something.
Anyway, as usual, Rt. 1 in this area was looking like a nuclear war against asphalt just occurred or maybe an AC-130 gunship had just fired off a sample of all available varieties of ordinance directly at the aging Post Road roadway.
I found myself wondering? How is this possible? What strange combination of government and citizenry could allow for a main road (in fact THE original main road through The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations) to just sit there day after countless day in an impossibly deplorable condition.
Okay, guys, I "get it" that Rhode Islanders are more down to earth than most (truly an admirable disposition). Yeah road work costs a lot of money (I don't really know, does it? Somebody go ask Rogoff or Kunstler.), and money doesn't grow on trees and we're proud Rhode Islanders but we're a little shabby and so is our state and stuff...
Come on, how about the wealthy Rhode Islanders? Aren't they tired of all the dents, dings, alignments, undercarriage work, ball joint replacements, tire and wheel replacements, yada yada?
You'd think they'd get upset and just group together and donate money to the state or those towns to get the roads re-graded and paved AT LEAST ONCE EVERY TWO HUNDRED YEARS ??
Or maybe the wealthy just let the auto insurance companies pick up the tab for them? Or do they just "bill it to TARP"?
The McDonald's that closed is another interesting story. I don't know myself what happened in terms of the business end of it. I drove by lookin' to grab a dollar double-cheese (no cheese) to fill me up for the next 6 or so hours and I noticed from about a thousand yards out...
...THAT THE GOLDEN ARCHES WERE GONE!
(AAAAAAAAAAIIGHHHHUGH!
Gasp!!!! )
I suddenly reeled as though someone had just shot a whole in my heart and through my stomach too, dammit!
One great thing about America: McDonald's !! Best marketing in the history of commerce! When your drivin' eyes spy those Golden Arches, boy, you get excited and your lips are quivering and salivating like Rover approaching his Doggie-Dish for some spare-rib scraps that you put in it! Those Golden Arches mean in the next ten minutes you are gonna spend $2, eat a hot tasty meal, maybe go to the bathroom, and also have a wonderful interaction with Quasimodo's grandmother and a few of her close relatives!!
So anyway I slowed down as the site of the former McDonald's approached and things quickly got interesting. The whole damn thing (I mean the WHOLE damn thing) had been freshly painted white as a sheet of 8x11 copy paper and EVERY LAST TRACE of those fabulous red and yellow hues had been ENTIRELY removed. I tried to turn in but there were grey concrete and rebar slab barricades blocking the main entrance. Quickly I flipped a Byotch and cruised back real slow to investigate the fascinating scene of the apparent death of a McDonald's Restaurant.
A very small sign read "Attention: Change of ownership" or something like that. Kiddy PlayLand had been dismantled and hauled off, and there was nary a trace of a fervidly muttering Hamburgler or anyone else for that matter to be found. I thought, "My God, they killed McDonald's and turned it into a giant flat-white ghost!"
I thought back to my childhood, and just how very badly I had wanted a jade-green Shamrock Shake on my birthday! A little green could really liven things up around here, I mused.
I looked in vain for even so much as a fire-engine red crumpled and discarded Cherry Pie wrapper-holder-thingy or a few bedraggled, forlorn, and possibly beef-tallow dipped french fries, but there were none to be had.
Eventually I moved on, deeply contemplating a trip to BK. Or worse yet, Wendy's (Shudder. "The Horror...The Horror!").
BTW, I can sure guess why this particular McDonald's went out of business: poor service and poor management! That was the only McDonald's for many miles around. None to the east or west, and you'd have to drive as far south as Wakefield or up north to East Greenwich to find the next functioning MickeyD's. Don't tell me that location can't support a McDonalds! Everyone around there just got sick of twenty years of terrible service and downright excrutiatingly lousy management.
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